and the dish ran away with the spoon

Some days are good days to be in the kitchen. And then again...

What you see here is a small pan of pasta sauce. And yes, that's the handle sitting on the counter next to the stove. On the up side, when the handle came off it didn't give me a chance to lift the pot enough for anything extremely red to happen.

As in any good Dr. Seuss story, where there is a thing one, there is always a thing two.

I decided it was probably time to pull the broccoli, having checked it just recently when it was very nearly ready. I walked it over to the sink, lifted the lid,

and pulled the little ring in the middle to lift the veggie steamer out of the pot... and the ring came off. It took me a second to figure out what happened (somewhat slow when hungry). At first I thought it was just the evening for handles to separate from their objects. But of course the truth of the matter is what you see here. That's the bottom of the steamer. Note the rather black innards of the pot. The dark round splotches you see are very flattened versions of what were once little feet on the bottom of the steamer. And of course the stem of the steamer had melted most of the way up so the ring came off because everything below it was nearly liquid.

I start to see why it is that all the plastic veggie steamers on the internet are listed as "microwave vegetable steamers. (Let me say in my own defense that I've been using this one this way for a long time with no ill effects - and more water, I reckon.) I suppose it's time to go in for one of the stainless ones. I also suspect that the time for these pots to serve is nearly over. This is the first time the handle of the little pot has come off mid-cook, but the one on the matching saute pan has a tendency to go wobbly. They've had a good long life now. They all came from the same original set, purchased by my mother at something like age 25 with her first symphony paycheck.